Patients With Treatment-Resistant Depression May Be Helped by Deep Brain Stimulation

A new study has revealed that patients with treatment-resistant depression showed significant improvements in their condition after undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS).

DBS uses high-frequency electrical stimulation targeted to the specific areas of the brain involved in neuropsychiatric disease.

Depression - Types, Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment
Depression is one of the most common mental disorders affecting approximately 340 million people in the world. No one is immune from depression - it occurs in people of all social classes, all countries and all cultural settings.

During the study, twenty patients were treated with DBS for 12 months. The team found that twelve of 20 patients experienced a significant decrease in depressive symptoms by six months with seven patients essentially well with few remaining symptoms

Benefits were largely maintained at 12 months with continued stimulation. No long-term side effects were reported.

Each patient was implanted with two thin wire electrodes (one on each side of the brain) in the white matter adjacent to subcallosal cingulate region or SCG.

Adolescent Depression - Causes - Affects - Depressed Teens - Treatment - FAQs
Adolescent depression is an ailment that occurs during the teenage characterized by persistent melancholy, disappointment and loss of self-esteem.

The other end of each wire was connected under the skin of the neck to a pulse generator implanted in the chest -- similar to a pacemaker -- that directs the electrical current.

The researchers regulated the intensity of the current according to the response of the patient.

Advertisements

Overview Suicide
Suicide is an act of ending one's own life and it usually results from emotional isolations and inability to adjust and cope with one's environment.

"In previous studies using brain imaging, we found the subcallosal cingulate region was a key region in an emerging emotion regulation circuit implicated in major depression," said Helen S. Mayberg, MD, lead researcher from University of Toronto.

"We postulated that if stimulation worked for the treatment of other neurological disorders where abnormal function of specific circuits was well established, such as Parkinson''s disease, then stimulation of the Cg25 region within this apparent depression circuit might provide significant benefit for patients with treatment-resistant depression," she added.

Patients With Treatment-resistant Depression may Be Helped by Deep Brain Stimulation

A new study has revealed that patients with treatment-resistant depression showed significant improvements in their condition after undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS).